The Edge of the Crater
by cobra-2k
Summary: Mabel has fallen ill, Pacifica seeks Dipper's help after some strange occurrences, and he thinks some of the questions they have are related. And Wendy seems different since returning from a recent trip. Rating increase possible.
1. Prologue: Heels

The nightmare vanished like smoke on the wind as Dipper's eyes bolted open. Already adjusted to the twilight, he peered around his room, searching for the source of the overwhelming dread he'd felt – _someone in the room someone right beside me_ – but in a mere instant that too was gone, and he was left only with the silence of the house in the darkness, and the sense that something was wrong. His heartbeat, having been an intense staccato, began to wind down to a normal rate.

He looked over at Mabel in the other bed. Somehow she'd managed to fall asleep on her stomach, the right side of her face resting on the pages of some magazine. Her eyes were still closed, and her mouth was slightly open. Glancing at the floor, he saw Waddles nestled in some old shirts near the foot of Mabel's bed. Everything else was at it should be; all seemed right with the world.

As the first rays of the morning sun started to creep in through the picture window, Dipper suddenly became very aware of his pulse, of a slight twitch in his neck. He breathed deeply and tried to focus on the intake and exhalation of air. The sense that something was wrong wouldn't leave.

That morning continued remarkably like the one before it. The twins' great-uncle Stan knocked on their door shortly after dawn to tell them breakfast was nearly ready, and Mabel had gotten up and staggered to the bathroom to shower in a fog. Dipper hadn't been able to return to sleep for the past hour, and took the time that Mabel was out of the room to do a more thorough inspection of it, to see if there was anything physically wrong that might account for his unease. The search was futile. The room was in about the same state of disarray that it usually was. Waddles peered at him as he checked under the bed and inside the closet, tensing up every time he turned his head. Eventually he realized that there was nothing he could see that he shouldn't be seeing. Mabel returned from the bathroom and mumbled something that was probably a "good morning."

Mabel had been sleeping poorly for the past week or so. A few times she'd gotten up just to fall back asleep again the moment she put her head down. "Hey, you feeling okay?" he asked.

Mabel nodded and yawned in response. "Yeah, yeah, 'm fine. Just need some juice or something..." she started to drift towards her bed again, so Dipper got in between the two.

"Uh huh, and juice is _that_ way, downstairs, remember? Along with pancakes?"

For a second, Dipper forgot his nerves as his twin's face lit up. "Pancakes?! Alright, Calorie City, here we come!" He smiled as Mabel grabbed Waddles and flung him over her shoulder before rushing out the door. Waddles, for his part, seemed content with being a shoulder-mounted anti-aircraft pig.

Alone in the room, Dipper grabbed his clothes for the day and made his way to the shower.

* * *

"Alright, kids, listen, uh, I've got an important meeting with the town council today. Something about 'safety standards.'" Stan Pines made no effort to hide his disdain for anything the local government had to say, although he did appear to have shaved more evenly than usual that morning. "So I'm leaving you two in charge of the shop til I get back. It'll probably be pretty slow, so just don't break anything and don't let Wendy or Soos slack off, got it?"

"Got it Gruncle Stan," said Dipper as he took Stan's plate and utensils from Mabel and lowered them into the warm, soapy water in the sink.

"You don't have to worry about a thing!" said Mabel, grinning, "We've got everything totes under control!" She grabbed her own plate, but stifled a yawn with her forearm before grabbing her other dishes.

Stan raised an eyebrow at her. "You _sure_ you're good, kiddo? You been acting a little under the weather lately." Mabel swallowed another yawn and waved him off as she shook her head. "Well, alright, but try to take it easy today. Last thing I need is you kids working yourselves into the same early grave as me. Anyway, I'll be back, eh, eventually." With that, he grabbed his coat from a nearby stand and left the room.

Mabel resumed gathering the dirty ceramic dishes. "Psh, it's not like I'm that tired. Us teenagers don't need as much sleep as old guys like him, right bro-bro?"

Dipper turned to face her. "Actually, Mabel, Gruncle Stan has a point. You don't have your normal Mabel-esque energy. Maybe you're coming down with something?"

As he asked this, Mabel handed him an armful of dishes. He took the weight into his hands, it wasn't that much, when he felt a strange, quick _tug_ at his right arm. All at once, his hand jerked open, and the plates began to fall as he tried frantically to get a grip on them again. He managed to snatch one of them, but the second dropped to the floor edge-first, shattering on impact.

Bits of off-white ceramic flew around the floor, skittering under chairs and the fridge. Dipper groaned in dismay as he set the unbroken plate in the sink and knelt down to try and grab the larger pieces of the plate off the ground. He grimaced at the shards, cursing his clumsiness. "You okay?" he asked, not looking at Mabel, asking almost out of reflex.

There was a brief pause, which was all Dipper needed to ascertain that Mabel was likely not okay. To further confirm, he heard Mabel utter " _Damn_." He turned to see that Mabel was feeling her face with the back of her hand, wiping away fresh blood. A small cut had been opened on her cheek, and even though she was bleeding, she looked more stunned than hurt.

" _Damn_ ," he echoed, and stood up, ignoring the remains of the plate. "Mabel, I'm so sorry! I didn't-"

"No, no," she said, "I shouldn't have given you all of it at once." She grabbed a napkin off the table and held it against her face, where it quickly turned a vivid scarlet. "I guess I'm not as awake as I thought."

"No, it was my fault," he insisted, "I, like, twitched or something, and dropped it. C'mon, let's go get the first-aid stuff. We can ask Soos to pick up the broken bits when he gets here."

"Yeah," she said distractedly. They walked back upstairs to the bathroom, neither noticing that blood from Mabel's cut dripped occasionally to the floor, making small but noticeable stains on the carpeting.

* * *

About ten minutes later, Mabel was back in bed, persuaded to take the day off. Dipper was in the storefront, behind the counter and waiting for Wendy to arrive. He'd had a crush on Wendy from the day they'd met, and although he knew that as a high-schooler she most likely had no particular desire to date someone three years younger, a guy could always dream. Of course, he hadn't worked up the nerve to really ask her about herself. She probably already had a boyfriend, being so cool and beautiful. It just wasn't fair.

As his thoughts started to turn sour, Dipper felt another _tug_ at his right arm. This time the sensation became a little clearer. It was like someone was pulling at his arm _up_ and _towards_ his body, not away from it like someone pulling at his sleeve. It lasted for maybe a tenth of a second. He jerked his sleeve up to inspect his arm.

It looked very much the same as he expected it to. A bit pale, despite his exposure to the summer sun. He could see the pale blue of veins near the crook of his elbow. He wondered, briefly, about the dark red color of unoxygenated blood and wondered if it was much like Gruncle Stan's good red pen. A noise from the front of the store drew his attention, and he realized he'd been staring intently at his upraised arm. He quickly put it at his side.

The door hadn't opened yet, but someone was definitely on the other side. From the sound of jingling metal, Dipper guessed they were looking for a key. He opened his mouth to say the door was open, but before he could get the words out, the door opened. There was Wendy, stuffing her keys back into her pocket and shutting the door behind her. She stared at the floor until the door had clicked behind her.

"Morning," said Dipper, trying to meet her eyes. Fortunately, she looked up at him, and smiled. It was such a pretty smile that he almost believed it. "You don't have to worry, Gruncle Stan's not around."

She laughed, and he forgot what had been troubling him that morning so far. "That's the best news I've heard for a couple days now, Dipper! Shove over, I think I can handle the mob scene in here."

He cheerfully left the high seat and gestured to it theatrically. "It shouldn't be too busy today. Mabel's not feeling well, she's resting upstairs."

Wendy's face fell as she took her usual seat. "Aww, poor Mabel! What's wrong?"

Dipper looked away sheepishly. "Well, she's been tired lately. And earlier I, ah, I dropped a plate, and it kinda broke, and a piece of it gave Mabel a cut on her cheek..."

Now Wendy looked terrified. "Oh man, that's messed up!"

"D-don't worry! It's only a little one, she said it didn't even hurt that much!"

"Dude, you don't understand: as cool as scars are, a girl can't have one on her face! It just doesn't work!"

He walked towards the front door, keeping his gaze away from Wendy. "I guess I hadn't thought about that. But it really wasn't _that_ bad," he said as opened the door and took in the warm summer breeze. "We put a little band-aid on it and went to bed. It was a pig band-aid."

Wendy sighed and looked sadly up at the ceiling to where she assumed the twins' room was. "Poor Mabel," she repeated. As her face was turned upward, Dipper looked at her face and saw for the first time dark lines under Wendy's eyes. She lowered her gaze to meet his. "Uh, dude, listen, I know this isn't a great time, but I might have to bail early today. I was going to tell Mr. Pines, but-"

Dipper frowned. Stan probably wouldn't have let Wendy out of work early, but he wasn't too concerned about that. "I mean, I guess it should be okay, but I don't know if Soos and me can hold down the whole shop on our own..."

Wendy put her hands up in innocence. "Oh, hey, I know this is bad timing, but, it's a family thing, y'know? I mean, it might not come up at all."

"Is everything okay?"

Wendy's face lit up with a smile. "Oh, yeah, totally, it's just my youngest brother's been having these nauseous fits the past few days, puking all over everything. My dad's got to work, and I might need to run to the store and pick up some medicine. Like, it wouldn't take more than a half hour tops! If I had to go." Dipper was still on the fence, when Wendy put her hands together and implored him with the most pathetic look he'd ever seen on her. " _Please_?"

"I mean," he started, knowing he'd lost, "I guess if you have to, you have to. A-and it shouldn't be busy anyway..."

She beamed at him. "Thanks, Dipper! You're the best!" She leaned back in her chair, balancing it precariously on its back legs. "Man, I hope I- we don't wind up getting sick too. Better make sure to wash our hands!"

They laughed, and Dipper started blocking the merchandise on the shelves. "So, how was that concert last night?" Wendy had told him of her excitement to see her favorite punk rock band, Asherah, two days ago, and had called in sick yesterday to go to Medford for the show. During the day his phone had been blown up with pictures of Wendy and her friends loading up a cooler with sodas, Lee and Nate drawing on Thompson with Tambry's lipstick, everybody drinking from suspicious styrofoam cups with disgusted expressions, Robbie hunched over looking ill, it looked like everyone was having a great time. The pictures stopped coming when around dusk, when the show started.

So Dipper was surprised when Wendy simply replied, "Oh, it was cool," and buried her head in a magazine.

Quiet.

"Was Asherah as great live?"

"Way better."

"Cool."

Quiet.

A noise outside. Both turned their heads to the door to see Soos strolling into the Shack, a big smile on his face. "Morning, dudes!"

* * *

After Soos had gone into the kitchen to clean up the plate fragments on the floor, Wendy and Dipper had started talking about old monster movies they'd both seen, and for a little while things were calm between them. The day's unlucky events had started to fade from Dipper's memory, and he was enjoying just hearing Wendy's voice. After an hour or so, they heard another person coming up the front walk.

"Hey, Tambry!" Wendy called out to her friend, who looked up from her phone and smiled back.

"Hey yourself," she said as she stepped inside. She waved perfunctorily to Dipper and crossed the room to Wendy's counter. "You got a minute?" she asked quietly as she tucked her phone into her pocket.

Wendy glanced past her at Dipper. "Hey, Dipper, would you mind giving us a second? Girl talk, you know?"

"Uh, yeah, sure," he said, grabbing a broom from a corner and taking it outside. "Gotta sweep the porch anyway."

"Thanks, dude!" she called after him just before he shut the front door. "So," she said, leaning on the counter, trying to seem unconcerned, "what's up?"

Tambry raised an eyebrow at her. "Wendy, look, none of the others are around. You don't have to pretend around me. How are you doing?" She put a hand on Wendy's own, and to Wendy's surprise, she didn't feel like pushing it away.

"I mean, I feel kinda weird. But I don't really know why." She looked into Tambry's eyes sadly. "Is that normal?"

Tambry shrugged. "Probably?"

"I just worry that...that people are going to treat me differently, y'know?"

"Hey, it's not like it was on the news, we're the only ones that know," Tambry said, forcing a smile. Wendy frowned, and she realized her mistake. "Well, the only ones around here, I mean, everything...nothing went wrong, right?"

Wendy shook her head. "No, thank god."

"Well, then, it's not the end of the world. Hell, it's not even that bad. Or bad at all, depending on how you look at it. It's not like you've lost friends or anything. I'm always here for you, and that kid out there still worships the ground you walk on."

"Would he if-"

"But he doesn't. But I bet he would. Why do-" she lightly punched Wendy in the arm. "Ooh, I think I get it now!"

"Tambers!" Wendy chided, but laughed and punched her back. They looked at each other in silence for a moment, smiling softly. "Thanks, Tambry. It means a lot to me to know you've got my back."

"Always, Wendy."

* * *

Dipper resisted the urge to eavesdrop on the girls' conversation, trying to focus on sweeping the dirt and leaves off the slatted wooden porch. He looked out at the treeline and couldn't help but grin. Gravity Falls was an unbelievably beautiful place when one really looked at it.

The mid-morning sunlight lit up the grounds of the Mystery Shack giving everything a golden hue. The grass, the dirt, everything seemed to shimmer in the

 _twitch_

his grip on the broom loosened and it clattered to the floor, falling off the porch entirely. He groaned, momentarily too annoyed to be concerned about how his body was behaving today. He got down on the ground and picked up the broom. As he straightened up, he saw another flash of gold in the woods, sprinting straight for him.

She came out of the woods, panting heavily. Her hair had come undone from the style it had been in, and her shoes and pants were flecked with dirt. She had bent over to catch her breath, but Dipper could recognize Pacifica Northwest anywhere.

"Can I help you with something?" he said.

She had been standing about twenty feet away, but as soon as he had spoken, she ran until she was standing right next to him. She spun around wildly, her eyes scanning the area. Dipper found himself looking around with her. "Is there something you need?"

"I-" she started, before she doubled over panting again. "I – need – ugh – water!"

About a week ago, he might have relished the chance to see the rich girl out of breath and practically on the ground with exhaustion. But since showing her an old and very unflattering news article about her family, his desire for revenge had been sated somewhat. "Okay, okay, you can have some water." Suddenly, he heard the voice of his Gruncle Stan in his head, pressuring him to take whatever sale he could get. "Bottles are a dollar inside."

She glared at him. "S-seriously?!" she finally straightened up, and now that he saw her up close, her clothes looked terrible, like she'd run through a briar patch.

"Are you okay?" he finally asked, almost hating that he had to say it.

Pacifica turned all around, checking out her surroundings again. He waited patiently while she ascertained whatever it was she wanted to know and then brushed herself off. "Look, you're a nerd..."

"Oh, did you really run all the way here just to insult me?!"

"No!" she said, putting up her hands in a placating gesture. "I-I'm sorry, that just...look. Pines," She stood close to him, staring deeply into his eyes. Two things struck him about her. The first was that she was really very pretty when you looked past how bourgeois she was. The second was that she looked absolutely terrified. "Do you know anything about..." she glanced around one last time, and dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper, "... _witches_?"

* * *

To stymie predictable questions, yes, you're right, not a lot happened. I like my horror like I like my gin: slow. Updates may not be terribly frequent, what with exam season upcoming and all. There are three films that served as the inspiration for this story, which will become more apparent as it continues. You might already be able to guess one of them. Rating may increase.


	2. Chapter One: Paper Flowers

"If this is some kind of prank..."

"I _swear_ ," Pacifica implored, grabbing onto Dipper's shoulders. "I _swear_ I'm not making this up. I think that a few days ago, I was cursed."

Dipper sighed and tried not to roll his eyes. He was curious, how couldn't he be? And he was concerned, because Pacifica seemed like she was telling the truth...but who really knew with her? "Alright, look, start from the beginning."

"Okay," she began, wiping some sweat from her brow, "it was over the weekend. My friends and I had decided to take a trip to Ashford to go visit the fair, and- wait, didn't you say I could get some water? If you _really_ do need the money so badly-" she reached into her pocket and took out a leather wallet before Dipper put his hands up.

"No, it's fine, you don't have to pay, just come in. We can talk inside, there aren't any customers today. Just keep it down, Mabel's trying to sleep."

Pacifica rolled her eyes as she put her wallet away. "Darn, I guess my primal screaming exercises will have to wait." She had regained some of the haughtiness he'd come to expect of after their first few meetings, but for a second, though, her usual venom was gone, and he could see something approaching gratitude in her expression. "Thanks, though."

She followed him inside, where Tambry and Wendy looked like they were in deep conversation. Both jerked towards the door when Dipper opened it, and both looked surprised to see the blonde in tow, looking more disheveled than either could recall ever seeing her, walk in and towards the counter. "Wow," said Tambry dully, "to what do we owe the honor?"

Again the wallet came out. "I'll give you twenty dollars to forget I was ever here."

Wendy snorted, but then saw Tambry snatch the twenty out of Pacifica's hand. In response to her friend's amazed look, Tambry shrugged. "I'm not above that."

"Did Soos finish with the kitchen?" Dipper asked, ignoring the exchange.

"Yeah," Wendy replied. "He popped in to say he was going to do some work on the pipes."

"Okay, thanks. Come on, Pacifica, this way." He led her away to the kitchen as the teens looked on.

"That kid does all right for himself," Tambry remarked.

"Hm," Wendy answered.

* * *

Pacifica looked around the Pines family kitchen, trying to hide her interest. She couldn't remember having been in a kitchen before; she was accustomed to waiting in dining rooms and only caught rare glimpses of the places her food actually came from. Dipper pulled out a chair for her and fetched a glass from a cupboard. He paused and eyed her momentarily. "You can drink tap water, right? You won't melt or anything?"

She narrowed her eyes at him. "I suppose you'd just love it if I did, huh?"

He turned away from her and filled the glass from the sink faucet. "No. At least not in here, we just cleaned." The memory of Mabel's pained look came back to him for a second. He forced it down as he handed Pacifica the glass. She took it, and put it to her lips.

And stared.

In an instant, it came back. The water, it was _everywhere_

"Hello? Earth to Northwest?" Dipper said, waving a hand in front of Pacifica's face. She blinked and faced him.

"Huh?"

"You spaced out there."

She realized she'd been holding onto the glass so tightly her knuckles were probably white from the strain. She eased up and set it down, somehow losing her thirst. "Sorry, I...this hasn't been an easy day."

Dipper's brow furrowed in concern. "Just take it easy and tell me what happened. I don't know if I can help, but I'll try." He immediately had second thoughts about agreeing to help without knowing what the problem was, but Pacifica looked so distraught that the words came out of his mouth unbidden.

"Okay," she started, "so my friends and I went to the fair at Ashford-"

"I can't picture you at a fair," Dipper interrupted.

She glared at him. "Oh, because you know me so well? That doesn't jive with all the years you've been observing me? Your wealth of information about my personal-"

"Alright, alright," he conceded. "I get the point. You went to the fair with your friends."

She was quiet for a second. "Well, I went. On my own. My friends aren't as into mini-golf as me. Anyway, point is, after winning the mini-golf competition, I wandered around the fairground for a while, not really looking for anything. That's when I saw this tent, some 'Madame Defarge,' or whoever, you know? A psychic.

"I've never believed in all that occult stuff, but for some reason I really wanted to go in there. It was like..." she drifted off, and her eyes became unfocused, "...it was like being in a dream, where you're kind of aware you're dreaming, but the 'you' in the dream can't do anything except what the dream tells you to do, you know? Like...like a straight line along curved space."

"A _what_?"

"Ugh, nevermind. The point is I went into this tent, but I can't really tell you why. Inside, the air was so thick with this incense that I could barely see. I had trouble breathing at first, but then I saw this lady, and...and somehow I knew that I couldn't leave even if I wanted to. She had this gray, straw hair, and her skin looked like really old paper. And her eyes had these tiny pupils, like someone poked a needle through a cloth."

I sat down at her table. I'm not sure what I said to her. She knew my name, and she said she could tell me what I needed. She got out this deck of cards-"

"Tarot cards?" he asked. "With pictures on them? Named The Fool, The Heirophant, Death, stuff like that?"

She nodded vigorously. "Yeah! She told me to shuffle the deck, and I did. I feel like I did it for a long time." Her hands started to mimic the motion of spreading cards around on the kitchen table. Dipper wasn't sure she knew she was doing it, as her eyes were fixated on some point on the wall. "She dealt them out in this weird pattern, and explained what it meant."

"Do you remember what she said?" Dipper asked. He knew a little bit about fortune-telling through tarot cards, as his mother had showed him and Mabel her own deck several years ago.

Pacifica was wide-eyed. "She said a lot of things. That I was lost. That I wouldn't find the way without help. Something about...an iris."

"Like, the eye? Or the flower?"

"I don't know," she said, shaking her head forlornly, "Just something about...she said to follow the iris to the iris below. Does that mean anything to you?" He shrugged. "She said to tell him it's too late, and that they're already in."

At this, Dipper tensed up. He leaned in, fighting the urge to interrupt her and run upstairs. She didn't seem to notice his sudden apprehension. "I think I asked her what she was talking about, and she said to listen for the whispers in the city." She snatched the glass of water off the table and gulped it down, privately wishing that it was some of the bourbon she'd sneaked out of her father's study a few times. She faced Dipper and grew nervous when she saw how intently he was watching her. "Don't you believe me?"

He thought about it. "I...maybe." He sat back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling, towards where Mabel was (hopefully) resting. "Listen, can you wait in the living room for a bit? I think I have something that...can you just wait a minute?"

Pacifica nodded, and stood up from the table. "I'm not going back out there," she said resolutely. She started to leave through the open doorway to the living room when Dipper cleared his throat behind her. She turned around. "What?" she asked, confused.

Dipper bit back a sigh. "Nevermind," he said as he grabbed the glass off the table and put it in the sink. "I'll be right back."

* * *

Pacifica walked into the living room as she heard Dipper begin to ascend some nearby staircase. The dim light of the room didn't do much to hide the fact that the old man who lived here wasn't too concerned with how his house looked. Or smelled, for that matter. Accustomed as she was to her own home, kept pristine by a legion of rarely-seen housekeepers, the dingy furniture and decrepit television set fascinated her on some level. Were those _actual_ "rabbit ears" on that thing? It was straining her suspension of disbelief just to imagine that the thing worked.

If it actually did. Gripped by a perverse curiosity, she glanced around the room for the remote. She couldn't recall the last time she's seen an image on a television...what did they call a pre-HD TV? In fact, she might have never seen one in real life at all. Her gaze wandered around the living room, (she wouldn't be caught dead sitting down in a place like this), and suddenly she realized how very quiet it was.

She couldn't hear Dipper or Mabel upstairs. The girls out in the shop area were either gone or just couldn't be heard in here. She was alone.

As alone as she had found herself just...it couldn't have been more than twenty minutes ago. Twenty minutes ago, she had written off the whole experience at the fair as just some weird effect of smoke inhalation (who knows what those plebs used as "incense"), but after what had happened in town, there was no denying it: either she had gone totally insane, or something incredibly bizarre was going on. Although technically, there was nothing preventing both from being true.

Casting around for the remote, her eyes landed on some small spots on the dull white carpet. At first, she thought they might be cigarette burns, which would have been odd, because she didn't see any ashtrays and or smell any smoke. Against her better judgment, she knelt down and squinted at the spots.

Up close, she could see they weren't the black of burns. Living with her mother, she knew what cigarette burns looked like up close. These, however, were a deep red. In fact, she could almost swear they looked like-

* * *

As he climbed the wooden staircase to the attic room he and Mabel shared, Dipper thought he could hear something over the creak of each step as he put his weight on it. A sharp, raspy, barking noise, coming from the direction of their room. He increased his pace and threw open the door when he got to it.

Mabel was in her bed, wrapped up in a swaddle of blankets, with only her head and one arm outstretched. She was coughing into the crook of her arm, hard. Glancing around, he saw Waddles at the foot of her bed, looking concerned. Or at least, that was how he interpreted the pig's posture. Mabel feebly turned herself around so she was facing him. She looked pale.

"Oh, hey, Dipper...what's up?" she asked weakly.

"Mabel!" He went over to her bed, but stopped when she waved him away. "Mabel, you look terrible!"

She laughed a little. "Thanks, Dipping Sauce. You look great too. I don't feel _that_ bad. Really."

He stared at her, frowning. He wanted nothing more than to sit down next to her and tell her that she was going to be fine...but her pallor and coughing gave him pause. "I think we should call Gruncle Stan and get you to the doctor."

"I'm sure it's nothing too serious," he said. "Summer cold, maybe. How are you feeling?"

"I'm..." he paused, and found himself rubbing him his right arm, recalling the odd twitching from earlier. "I don't feel like I have a cold."

Mabel looked like she was about to say something, but before she could, she shoved her face against her arm, her body wracked with deep coughing. It sounded painful, a rough bark within her throat. "You-" she stopped, her voice cracked and her eyes watering. "You shouldn't stay here too long. You might catch it too."

He wanted to go over to her, or at the very least, to say something. He tried to think, tried to form some phrase that might ease his sister's pain, if only for a second. Nothing came to mind. Besides, Mabel had already turned around again.

Sighing inside, Dipper turned toward his bed. From underneath it, from its place in the ancient dust on the floor, he pulled the journal. The journal he'd discovered shortly after his arrival in the town of Gravity Falls. He'd looked at it a few times, had wanted to study it in more depth, but most of it just didn't make sense. He would spend an hour poring over a single page, trying to figure out just what in the name of-

Mabel coughed loudly again in her bed. Dipper tucked the journal under his arm and headed for the door. Before he opened it, he paused. "Hey."

"Yeah?" Mabel asked faintly.

 _Have you been twitching at all lately?_

"What is it?" she asked.

"Do you...want anything from the store? Wendy has to go out today to run an errand, so if you want, I can ask her to pick something up..."

Quiet.

"Smile Dip?"

He grinned. "If they have it, sure. Haven't seen it around in a while, though."

"A small town like this, maybe they've got a reserve somewhere," she said, and gave a short laugh.

"Well, I'll ask. Get some sleep now. See you later."

He left the room, thankful she hadn't seen him take the journal. Mabel didn't like the journal, didn't like the strange things written in it, and didn't like the odd symbols and half-finished sketches drawn in seemingly random places throughout it. If she'd seen him grab it, it might have worried her, and clearly she didn't need anything else to worry about at that moment.

He took a moment at the top of the stairs to inspect the book's cover. It was bound with brown leather, thick and faded. Emblazoned in the center was a relief of a six-fingered hand, with a "3" etched deeply into the metal. Or at least, Dipper assumed it was a 3. Given the symbols within the book, some of which looked almost, but not quite, like recognizable letters and numbers, he couldn't be certain.

He walked down the steps, quietly in case Mabel had already drifted back to sleep. As he reached the foots of the stairs, he peered into the living room and saw Pacifica kneeling down, looking intently at-

* * *

"Hey," came Dipper's voice, and Pacifica lurched to her feet, nearly losing her balance in the process.

"Geez, you nearly gave me a heart attack!" she caught her breath and ran her fingers through her lustrous hair. Her hand caught on a knot, which she began to tease apart as she turned away from him. "What's that stain on the floor?"

Dipper glanced down at the spot she had been looking at and frowned. "That's...blood."

Pacifica's hands slowed. "Whose?"

"Mabel's, she-"

Pacifica whirled around, her hair forgotten for a second. "Is she okay?"

She looked surprisingly worried. "Yeah, she's fine, just got a little cut. It was right before you got here. Thanks for spotting that, I'll clean it later."

"Hmm," she replied, and went back to working out the knot. As she finished, she glanced at the book he was holding. "What's that?"

In response, Dipper sat down on the carpet and began leafing through pages. "A book I found. Something you said..."

He trailed off as he searched. Pacifica bent down to look over his shoulder. She wasn't sure what she had expected to be written in a book that looked as old the shack itself, but she hadn't expected this.

'a puppet, a pauper, a pawn, a king'

'they had that gum I liked'

'feels placed, arranged, ceremonial, a sacrifice?'

'I told you this would happen'

'it looked back at me'

'five minutes and up the ladder she sings'

'we've met before haven't we'

'you find your hole and then you can't look away'

'fear of blood tends to create fear for flesh'

'yonagumi'

'no tomorrow no tomorrow no tomorrow no tomorrow no tomorrow no tomorrow'

'one chants out between two worlds'

'YOU'RE NOT ME'

'help'

'please help'

The pages flickered by so quickly all she could glean were fragments, but there didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason behind the arrangement of words on the yellowed pages. Placed at odd intervals were drawings, usually small scribbles, the sort she might have drawn on the margins of a notebook out of boredom. Others were elaborate, purposeful depictions of...some looked like bugs, one some kind of map, some like lizards, at least one looked like two people hugging, like the time she'd stayed up too late when her parents were away and she'd gotten around the parental controls on her family's TV.

"What is this..."

He stopped flipping pages and faced up at her. She was taken by how serious his eyes looked, and how close he was to her. "I found this journal when I first got to Gravity Falls. It was hidden in...it looked like no one had touched it in years. So I didn't just make this up to mess with you. But something you said...what did the psychic tell you again?"

"She said that I wouldn't find the way without help, something about irises, that I should tell someone it's too late, they're already inside, something about whispers in the city." As she spoke, she could feel a nausea rising inside her. "What does it say?"

He turned the page.

This was a sketch over two pages, more detailed than the others. It looked like a professional anatomic drawing. The title, apparently, was 'if they get inside it's too late.'

The sketch was of a long, thin, wormlike creature, its sides dotted at regular intervals with some sort of protrusion. At one end was what could only be a sort of mouth, a wide opening inside which was a smaller hole surrounded by row after row after row of what looked like tiny, sharp fangs.

What disturbed Pacifica more than the sight of the _thing_ however, was that the artist had chosen to draw the creature inside what was unmistakably a human brain.

* * *

To clarify some canon issues here, the Pines have not encountered any blatantly supernatural things here yet. So no gnomes, no Bill, no mantaurs, etc. Events from the show have played out without the weirdness, i.e., there was a party at the Mystery Shack where the twins met Pacifica, but there wasn't a magic photocopier. I'm a firm believer in horror stories requiring some veneer of normalcy.


	3. Chapter Two: Ordinary Vanity

"I don't get it," Dipper muttered, frowning. "What's the connection between an old woman and some sort of worm?"

Pacifica glanced out of the window into the yard nervously. "I don't know anything about any worms. All I know is that since that day…" He could see her grip the fabric of her skirt tightly and twist, her hand flushing with the effort as tight whorls appeared in the cloth. All the while, her eyes were focused on something outside. He looked in the direction she was looking, and saw nothing but the woods. "Just now, I was in town, jogging. Have you ever been out in town early in the morning?"

He shook his head. "I'm not really a morning person."

"Well, a few people in town are. People are out, getting errands done, opening up shops, stuff like that. And there were this morning, just like any other day. But then, I felt this, this _pressure_ , on my chest, and I couldn't breathe."

He was about to remark that maybe she was just out of shape, but as he slid his eyes up and down her lithe form, it was pretty clear that she wasn't likely to get winded from a morning run.

"I stopped to get my bearings, and when I looked around, it was like everyone had just _vanished_. There had been people around, I swear, but then they were just _gone_. I looked into some stores, and they were all empty. The sky looked overcast, and when I looked at my phone, it was dead."

Seeing him open his mouth to ask a question, she fished her phone out of her skirt pocket and flashed him the screen. It seemed to be working fine now. "I…I kind of panicked, and just started running, and then I wound up here."

At this Dipper raised an eyebrow. "And why did you come here exactly?"

"I didn't-" he might have been imagining it, but he thought he could see a faint blush on her cheeks, "-I wasn't planning on it, I was just running away. Once I saw you, I remembered that you know about all sorts of crazy stuff, so maybe you'd have some idea what was going on."

He shrugged. "I can't say I do. I mean, even if what you're saying is true-"

"Why would I lie?" she asked, glaring at him.

He put his hands up in a placating gesture. "My point is, if you really do have some kind of spell on you, I don't know what to do about it off the top of my head. I'll have to do some research. This book has a lot of things in it, but it's not the easiest thing in the world to study, y'know? Like," he took the journal, opened to random page, and started to read aloud, "'At one end the seducer for the thirty-four mulberry fields in the forest between four states these being Colorado Utah Arizona Pakistan at the two straight up at noon when the residents of a dead man's chest take off the hara-kiri rock.'"

She stared at him blankly. "Meaning?"

He shut the book. "I don't know. I've been trying to work out what most of this stuff means all summer. Every so often, I'll find some kind of connection that seems to make a little sense, but most of it just seems like gibberish. And even the parts that are labeled, take a look," he flipped to the middle of the journal and turned it towards Pacifica.

This part appeared to be laid out like an actual book, with a chapter title: "MAGIC." The rest of the next few pages, however, were filled with an unbroken line of numbers. "So, what is it? Some sort of code?"

"It must be, but I haven't been able to figure it out," he said, closing the journal. "I've tried Brown Fox, Caesar, even Enigma, and it doesn't seem to work for this." Seeing her perplexed look, he continued, "I know a little bit about codes, but this is more complicated than anything I've done before. It might even be some sort of code within a code. And I mean, there's no telling if this even says anything about illusions anyway, it might all be summoning magic for all I know."

"Illusions?" Pacifica asked. "You think it was just a trick that everybody disappeared?"

"Well, if this lady wanted to scare you, she'd cast a spell on you, not everyone else. What's easier: making everyone vanish or just making you _think_ everyone vanished?"

Her heart rose in her throat. "So you're telling me _half the town_ saw me freak out and run for my life?!"

"Maybe? Maybe no one was paying attention to you?" Her narrowed eyes revealed just how unlikely she found that possibility. "Well, then I'm sure you'll find out once you get home."

At the word 'home,' Pacifica seemed to wince. He recalled that whenever he'd seen her with her family, she always looked ill at ease, her expression more forced than normal. "Dammit, I can't go home looking like this without a lot of questions. And I definitely can't call for a ride from here. I can't be known to have associated with some _tourist trap_."

He chose to ignore the implied insult to his great-uncle's business, since it was a fair description. "I think Wendy and Tambry are going into town in a little while. Maybe if you asked politely, they'd let you hitch a ride with them."

"You mean in that rust wagon outside?" she replied incredulously. "The one that looks like it's gonna burst into flame any second?"

"That's the one," he said, rolling his eyes. "It's that or walk back, I guess. And what are you going to do about your clothes?"

To his surprise, she took out her phone again. "What's your cell number?"

"I-" Now he was sure _he_ was blushing. It wasn't often one of the most wealthy, pompous, and (self-proclaimed) attractive girls around asked for his phone number. Pacifica must have noticed, because she groaned and rolled her eyes so far back into her head it looked painful.

"So I can say you ran into me and I'm billing you for messing up my jogging outfit and knocking me down. And so you can let me know if you find out anything."

He told her, and she quickly tapped it into her contact list. "Is it really that important that no one knows you're here? I mean, what would your parents really do if you just said you'd stopped by to see Mabel and tripped out in the front yard?"

"I don't see how it's any of your business what my parents would do in a given situation," she snapped.

"I mean, you were here for the party," he continued, "and you were even on the same stage as Mabel, who is proletariat, after all."

"That was for a competition, which I won. Totally different thing." Her haughty expression softened a little. "Where is Mabel, anyway?"

"Upstairs. I think she has a summer cold or something."

"Hm," she huffed. "Too bad." He waited for her to say she hoped Mabel felt better, but it didn't seem like such an outburst of compassion was forthcoming.

"So," he said finally, "if that's all…"

"Wait, what?! That's it?!" Pacifica looked astonished. "I come to Mr. Sherlock Holmes of the Paranormal with a magic problem, and he's got for me is 'I'll look into it?' Look, if this is about money-"

"It's not," he interrupted, and immediately regretted doing so a little. Maybe it wouldn't hurt to bill Pacifica for his time…nah, he couldn't bring himself to do that. The image of her frightened expression from earlier came unbidden to his mind. It wouldn't be right. "I just need some time. I just don't really know what to do right now. I mean, I know a charm that's supposed to ward off the effects of black magic, but I'd need at least a few hours to get what I need to make it. And I don't even know if it would work yet. You're just lucky there's a new moon tonight."

"I'll pretend to know what that means if it makes you happy. So when's the soonest you can get me this 'charm?'"

"Tomorrow morning, unless you want to come out with me tonight." _Wait, did that sound like I was asking her on a date?_

"When?" came Pacifica's immediate response, which she then questioned. _Wait, that almost sounded like he was asking me on a date_.

"I mean," he said, starting to panic, "it's not like I need help or anything, but I'd need some thousand-seal picked under the new moon. I know where to find some in the woods, so I figured I'd go out after sundown. We can meet up somewhere in town if you want, but I probably won't be done until after midnight."

"I'll…let you know," she said, looking anywhere in the room but at Dipper. "Anyway, I should probably be getting back. I usually would have called my chauffeur by now."

"Right," he said, momentarily too nervous around her to insist on her showing at least a little bit of gratitude. "Let's see if the others are ready to go."

He led her back to the storefront, where Tambry stopped whatever she was saying mid-sentence and waved at him. "Hey Dr. Funtimes, what's going on?" Wendy hadn't turned to look at him, for some reason.

Pacifica smirked derisively at his nickname, which Dipper ignored. "Hey. Wendy, if you wanted to go to into town, that's cool, but would you mind picking up some cold meds for Mabel while you're there?"

Wendy finally faced him, with a smile that looked a little too casual on her face. "Yeah, Dipper, no problem! It shouldn't more than a half four, forty-five minutes tops."

"Great, I really appreciate it!" he said, half-smiling. There was silence for a second as he waited for Pacifica to ask for a ride into town.

It was broken awkwardly as she cleared her throat. "Since you're…going into town anyway, I don't suppose you could…I mean, I'd also really…appreciate it, if I could ride with you." It seemed almost physically painful for her to ask for help.

Tambry shrugged. "Yeah, okay. I'm sure my car's not up to your usual standards, but if you need a ride, then you need a ride." Seeing Pacifica glare at her, she decided to push a bit harder. "And hey, if you need to borrow a top or something, I've got a shirt on under this."

Pacifica blanched as she saw that Tambry's shirt was fraying at the edges. "Yeah, not necessary."

* * *

Pacifica regretted agreeing to get a ride into town from Tammy or whatever her name was the moment she stepped into the backseat of her puny sedan. Wendy, for her part, resented Tambry a little for allowing the obnoxious girl along, but given the ragged state of Pacifica's clothes, it was the right thing to do. When they'd left, she'd thought Dipper seemed anxious about something.

"So," Tambry said as she started the car after the second attempt, glancing at Pacifica in the rearview mirror, "what did you want to talk to Dipper about?"

Pacifica propped her head on her hand and stared out the window as the car pulled away from the Mystery Shack. "A tarot reading."

Wendy turned in her seat to look at her. "I didn't think you were interested in things like that." Truth be told, she wasn't aware that Dipper was either, but then, he was interested in all sorts of strange things. "So he did one for you?"

"No," she replied, "I just wanted some help interpreting one I got a while ago." She trailed off.

The smell of stale spilled beer in the backseat was beginning to get to Pacifica, so she tried to roll down the window. Unfortunately for her, the crank remained fixed in place, as if rusted. "Just how old _is_ this thing, anyway?"

"I remember it from when I was a kid," Tambry said as she avoided a pit in the dirt road. "It doesn't look like much, but it runs fine. A lot of machines are like that. Not like people."

Pacifica glowered at the back of her head. "What do you mean by that?"

"Well," Tambry started casually, "take my phone. It's not the latest model, not the fastest. It might have a couple of cracks in it. But it does everything I need it to do, as fast as I need it to be done. Some people, though, they look great. Like models or movie stars. Everyone who sees them assumes they're smart and together. A computer that looks state-of-the-art probably runs perfectly, right? But some people, when you see how they operate, how they speak and act, you get the impression that they're just...not equipped with the right hardware, y'know? No matter how good they look."

She lapsed into silence, and for the few minutes to get to town, no one spoke. Wendy was certain that Tambry was dancing around an insult. Everyone in town had noticed that Priscilla Northwest had had some work done on her face. It was just what wealthy people did, right? Take a knife to any perceived flaw. If Pacifica was wise to what Tambry was getting at, she didn't let on. Even Tambry looked a little worried at the silence, as if aware she was out of line. Eventually, they pulled up outside the local pharmacy. "Whelp," said Wendy, relieved to be out of the situation, "looks like this is my stop."

"I'll make it from here," Pacifica said as she unclicked her seatbelt. "What do I owe you?"

Tambry chuckled. "A favor to be repaid at some later date?"

Pacifica had already opened the door. "Whatever. Thanks."

Wendy opened her passenger door and started to walk into the pharmacy. "Just be a minute, Tambers!"

Tambry waved to her as she let her car idle. She watched Pacifica start to walk away before turning back and knocking on the window. "You don't actually have to pay me," she said as she rolled it down. Upon seeing Pacifica's icy stare, she felt herself trembling a little. "Uh, listen, I-"

 _"You_ listen _,"_ Pacifica said. She stared at Tambry with a conflicted expression for a second. "When I was a little girl, maybe six years old, my parents took me to see a Broadway show on Christmas Eve. We were going to a restaurant for dinner, and my mother realized she needed cash, so we had the chauffeur pull over near an ATM. She was about to get out of the limo, and my father was saying 'Oh, I should go with you! Don't you know this city is dangerous?' but she just laughed him off. She got out of the car and walked over to the machine. But just before she got to the curb, she walked over a patch of black ice, and she fell. Her face smacked right onto the curb." She reached up to her face and pointed to her left eye socket. "Her skull was cracked open all around here. She nearly died, and she could have lost her eye. I'd never seen so much blood. It ran down the street a little ways and stained this patch of snow nearby. I remember thinking it looked like rose petals. We got her to the hospital, and she needed all kinds of surgery to look normal again. We wound up spending that Christmas next to a hospital bed, looking at my mother wrapped up in bandages and wondering if she'd ever see us again."

There was silence for a moment before Tambry realized her mouth was hanging open. She looked quickly over to the pharmacy door to see if Wendy was coming back before facing Pacifica again, her features hard. "I'm...I'm sorry. I shouldn't have-"

"No," Pacifica interrupted. "You really shouldn't. So if you have any more profound wisdom to share with me in the future, I'd appreciate it if you just kept quiet instead." She spun on her heel and stormed off towards the center of town.

Tambry realized she was gripping the steering wheel hard enough to leave indentations in her hands. She let go and breathed deeply, trying to calm down.

* * *

Wendy walked into the drugstore, the familiar faces and products welcoming her as an old friend. She'd been going to this store since she was old enough to be taken outside. From old photos, she knew that her father had refused to put her in a stroller, insisting that he carry her everywhere in his burly arms. The cashier nodded to her as she walked in, and she waved back to her.

Her eyes passed over the merchandise on the shelves. Chips, candy, cheap plastic toys, over-the-counter painkillers, first aid supplies, pregnancy tests (her gaze lingered briefly), cotton swabs, humidifiers. She handed the pharmacist the prescriptions for her brother and Mabel and sat down in the small white plastic chair to wait.

She was thumbing through a magazine, only half paying attention to the words on the pages, when she felt eyes on her. She glanced up.

That old man, McGucket, was standing just a few feet away, staring right at her. His eyes seemed to weave in and out of focus, and his mouth was agape. Wendy looked down at her magazine again. She tried focusing on whatever article she had been reading, but found the words evading her comprehension as she felt the old man's manic eyes on her. She could tell the old man hadn't moved, and glanced up at him again, intent on telling him to stop staring at her, when he spoke. "I heard about you!" he said.

She didn't know how to reply to that, or even if she should. He spoke clearly, or as clearly as she'd ever heard him speak. A glance around revealed there wasn't anyone else in proximity he could be talking to. "Excuse me?" she asked.

"Dad!"

A younger man came out from an aisle and grabbed McGucket by the wrist. "Come _on_ , dad, try to keep up. Don't bother people in the store."

McGucket didn't budge as his son pulled at him. She kept staring at Wendy, now focused completely on her face. " _I_ heard about _you_!" he repeated, before allowing himself to be led away, a dazed grin on his face. Around her, the sound of the pharmacy store employees chattering to each other faded back into her perception.

"Wendy?"

She jerked around to see the pharmacist with two bags at on the counter. He looked at McGucket as he and his son left the store. "That old kook didn't scare you, did he?"

"I…no, it's nothing," she said, "Just startled me." She hoped he couldn't see the tension in her face. "Oh, can you add on a six-pack of ginger ale?" she asked as she fished out her debit card.

"Danny Junior still not over that stomach bug?" he asked as he rang her up. "It's on the house, I just hope he feels better. And you be careful not to catch anything yourself!"

She forced what she hoped was a warm smile. "Thanks, Mr. Morris! I'll do my best!"

"And say hi to your dad for me, okay?"

"I will, thanks," she said as brightly as she could as she gathered up her bags and headed for the door.

The old man was just crazy, everyone knew that. He couldn't have meant anything by it…he couldn't possibly know. No one did except Tambry, she was almost sure. Almost.

Finding herself resisting the urge to sprint back to Tambry's car, she tore open the passenger door and flopped into the seat. "Tambry, you don't think…don't think anyone else knows, right?"

Tambry looked like she was about to reply sarcastically, but then saw the concerned look on Wendy's face. "No way, everyone else was passed out or nowhere around. Why?"

"Just…" she sighed. "Just a bad feeling I can't shake."


End file.
